Check In With the Velociraptor at the World’s First Robot Hotel

Lewis-Kraus visits a hotel in Japan where service is provided by robots and considers the necessity of human interaction.

Source: Wired
Published: Mar 2, 2016
Length: 32 minutes (8,055 words)

The Magic of Archives: A Reading List

I’m thrilled to present this week’s Reading List in collaboration with Samantha Abrams, an archivist and great friend. I’d planned to curate something about the importance and changing role of archiving—an oft-misunderstood or overlooked science—but I didn’t have enough in my longform arsenal. Cue Sam.

Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 6, 2016

The Past Still Grips Rodney King

A quarter century has passed since the infamous beating of Rodney King. In the months before King’s death, he was profiled by Kurt Streeter, who portrays a man still very much haunted by the past.

Published: Apr 23, 2012
Length: 10 minutes (2,529 words)

Who is Behind One of the Biggest Scams in History?

The first installment in a five-part investigative series from CNN Money about one of the world’s longest-running cons. Over the past two decades, vulnerable people have been duped out of hundreds of millions of dollars by a French psychic named Maria Duval. Part two of the series is  also online, and the third installment will be available on Thursday.

Source: CNN
Published: Feb 24, 2016
Length: 7 minutes (1,800 words)

The Plot to Take Down a Fox News Analyst

How a former C.I.A. operative worked to expose a former Fox News analyst who claimed he also worked for the intelligence service.

Published: Mar 1, 2016
Length: 29 minutes (7,272 words)

No One Separates the Rich and Famous Better than Laura Wasser

She charges $850 an hour, often gets followed by TMZ, and has handled the separations of everyone from Britney Spears to Stevie Wonder.

Published: Mar 2, 2016
Length: 11 minutes (2,995 words)

A Schoolboy Wrongly Accused

The account of a Ugandan teen wrongly accused of two murders, and the lawyer who cleared his name.

Source: BBC
Published: Mar 1, 2016
Length: 17 minutes (4,289 words)

To Consider Myself a Human Being

How China remembers the Cultural Revolution.

Author: Ji Xianlin
Published: Mar 3, 2016
Length: 26 minutes (6,690 words)

Sin Will Find You Out

The author retraces her birth mother’s footsteps through a bygone Manhattan.

Source: Catapult
Published: Mar 1, 2016
Length: 11 minutes (2,903 words)

Bob Dylan’s Secret Archive

There have long been rumors that Bob Dylan had stashed away an extensive archive, but even die-hard Dylanologists couldn’t have dreamed up anything like the 6,000-piece private trove of his work recently acquired by a group of institutions in Oklahoma. The archives hold untold insight into the songwriter’s work, but George B. Kaiser—the driving force behind the acquisition—hopes they have the power to do something much bigger: make Tulsa cool.

Published: Mar 2, 2016
Length: 9 minutes (2,300 words)